Attempting to do for southern ghosts (and film students?) what "The Blair Witch Project" did for, well, the Blair Witch, "The St. Francisville Experiment" had the makings of a decent little film for its first half-hour or so. It follows the same faux-documentary format as Blair Witch, and though it falls far short in some respects -- for example, the local color is not as fleshed out and the historical background is neither as creative nor as believably presented -- it soon seems that it will surpass the original in terms of sheer hoax-making. One doesn't have to make too great a leap to believe the dialogue, characters, and situation (video cameras running). When the four main characters begin to tour the haunted plantation house, it is genuinely creepy... at first, anyway. Then whatever verisimilitude has been created is destroyed by the limitations of both the story and the actors. From the moment a cat leaps out of a closet directly into the camera, the film falls apart, and the subsequent repetitiveness soon makes a dull hash of things. St. Francisville's psychic "Madison" becomes every bit as obnoxious as Blair's "Heather." All in all, a pretty bad movie.
Review of The St. Francisville Experiment
